


translucence

by riptheh



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Again, Angst, Angst with a happy ending sort of, Emotional Manipulation, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Memory Alteration, Memory Loss, Shadow Weaver | Light Spinner (She-Ra)'s A+ Parenting, and shadow weaver mindwiped adora, basically im obsessed w the idea that catra & adora kissed in the horde, mental manipulation, so i wrote about it, why do all my fics involve adora losing her memory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-31
Updated: 2020-07-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:02:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25628659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/riptheh/pseuds/riptheh
Summary: The first time it happens, she doesn't see Shadow Weaver take her memories.The second time it happens, Shadow Weaver makes her watch, and Catra remembers it for a long, long time.By the third time, it's almost expected.OrCatra and Adora kissed many, many times in the Horde. Too bad Adora remembers none of it.
Relationships: Adora & Catra & Shadow Weaver | Light Spinner (She-Ra), Adora/Catra (She-Ra)
Comments: 31
Kudos: 383





	translucence

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so I know this has been done before (and I've literally written another fic touching on this topic), but I'm obsessed with this concept and had to try it out myself. for, uh, the second time. no judgment. 
> 
> (also if yall are here bc you expected a multichapter update and got this instead, those are coming i promise. just. more slowly)

The first time it happens, they’re eight years old, and Catra doesn’t remember much. Or rather, she remembers it so vividly that it lives on in her dreams, stark and horrific, all the moments leading up to it, and later it blurs into the ocean of so many times after.

“Your hand is sweaty,” Catra whispers to Adora, who makes a face and pulls back from the corner she’s peering around. And Catra is right—she can feel the nervous clamminess through her thin fur, and it’s making her palm all damp—but when Adora makes that face, she pulls away, and Catra wishes she wouldn’t.

“How ‘bout now?” Adora says, and wipes her hand on her pants, waving it as if to make a show. Catra sticks out her tongue.

“Just see if the coast is clear, okay?” she says, and when Adora is too busy sticking her tongue out in return, brushes past her. “Whatever, I’ll do it.”

“Hey!” Adora spins around, but Catra is already using a spare pipe to hoist herself up high, high enough to see the entire hallway. Her earlier guess is right—the coast is clear, and they have a free path to the kitchen.

She lands lightly beside Adora, who startles, then shoots her a disgruntled look. Catra ignores it. “C’mon. There’s nobody out there.”

“Really?” Adora peeks around the corner herself, and Catra has to suppress a huff. This isn’t the first time they’ve snuck into the kitchens, but with every repeat, Adora gets more and more nervous. It would almost be annoying, and Catra has considered leaving her behind more than once, but she always discards the idea.

She and Adora do everything together. They even get in trouble together, though it’s Catra who receives the brunt of the punishments. 

“Yeah, c’mon.” When Adora doesn’t move, she pushes her out into the open, giggling at Adora’s annoyed shriek. “See, I told you! Stop being a baby.”

“I’m not a baby!” Adora retaliates by throwing herself at Catra, sending them both tumbling through the open kitchen doors. Later, it occurs to Catra that it’s odd to leave them open, that the mess hall officer always closes them and every other time they’ve had to pick the lock, but she’s not thinking about that now. She’s too busy trying to pull Adora’s ponytail and get one hand over her mouth because she won’t stop giggling, and doesn’t she know they’re going to get in trouble?

Catra’s too hungry to get in trouble. She knows Adora is hungry too, but that’s because Adora was stupid and skipped dinner for her, not because she’s been denied it for two days straight like Catra. Catra wants to eat, and Adora is being silly.

“C’mon, Adora!” It’s Catra who scrambles upright and ends the fight, skipping lightly away when Adora grabs for her tail, still laughing. “We’re gonna get in trouble!”

“Thought you didn’t care about trouble,” Adora says, but she smiles anyway, all gap-toothed and wide, and takes the hand that Catra proffers. Her hand is still sweaty when Catra grasps it, but she doesn’t mention that. Adora always has sweaty hands anyway. Probably a human thing.

“I care about food, dummy,” she says, sticking her tongue out, and has to swallow a smile when Adora sticks her tongue out in return. “C’mon. The gray ration bars are—”

“Did you really think you could get away with this?” a familiar voice rings out, and Catra startles, her tail shooting straight up. Her ears flatten and she spins around, yanking her hand from Adora, who stumbles and then staggers to some form of attention.

Shadow Weaver sweeps through the kitchen doors, and that’s when Catra realizes they were open and waiting, a trap as obvious as a spider’s web. _Stupid, stupid, I’m so stupid—_

“Shadow Weaver, we were just—!” Adora starts to say, but Shadow Weaver silences her with a wave of her hand. 

“Sneaking food, I believe.” She sweeps past them and to the drawers where Catra knows the ration bars are kept. Catra forces herself to remain still, to stop shaking, as Shadow Weaver inspects the rations one by one.

Beside her, Adora reaches out to take her hand, and her palm is clammy with fear, but Catra doesn’t object. Instead, she’s only grateful for the warmth.

“It seems I have caught you before you managed to get your greedy hands— _what in heaven’s name are you doing?”_ Her voice rises in a shriek as she turns around, and both Catra and Adora startle, their hands tightening as if to pull them closer.

“Nothing!” Catra says, mainly because she doesn’t understand what they could possibly be doing, just standing there, but then Shadow Weaver’s eyes narrow and she extends a slender finger towards their linked hands. 

“Catra, let go of her.” Her voice is soft, utterly sharp, and Catra does as she’s told, pulling away and tucking her hands behind her back. She’s not sure what she’s done wrong, but the ghost of the touch stings anyway, along with the realization of wrongness.

Wrong, somehow. Holding Adora’s hand is wrong, and bringing her to the kitchens is wrong, and being her friend is wrong, wrong, wrong—

Everything Catra does, she messes up. 

“Adora, come with me.” Shadow Weaver beckons with her finger, and Catra’s heart plummets, because this is wrong. Adora never goes alone with Shadow Weaver. Adora never gets punished by Shadow Weaver. Catra should be following her, should be bearing the brunt of the punishment, because she’s always the one who messes up.

Somehow, instinctively, she knows this is her fault too.

But then Shadow Weaver considers something. She cocks her head at Catra, and something close to a sneer spreads across her mask.

“No, Catra, you come too. I will talk with you separately.”

Catra’s heart both plummets and rises at the same time. She glances to Adora, sees a face stark white with fear—of course, because Adora never gets punished—and then jerks into motion as Shadow Weaver makes an impatient noise in her throat. Her feet feel like bricks as she drags them along, and her face is burning hot with a humiliation she doesn’t understand.

Clearly, she’s done something wrong by touching Adora’s hand and being her friend and—

“Adora, sit outside.” Catra blinks, and looks up. They’re at the Black Garnet chamber, the door towering high above her, and beside her, Adora is fidgeting nervously.

“Yes, Shadow Weaver,” she says, and casts Catra a helpless glance, who only shakes her head slightly as she follows Shadow Weaver inside the chamber. This is it, she can’t help but think, her stomach churning and her heart jumping. Shadow Weaver is going to do something terrible to her, something that will ensure she never, ever—

“Sit down, Catra.” 

Catra startles at her voice, and the implication behind it—or rather, the lack of. There’s no anger there, no menace. There’s only regret. 

It takes Catra a moment to move, but Shadow Weaver doesn’t even yell at her as she jerks into motion, and clambers into a too-big chair at the edge of the room. There are ties attached to the edge, and the chair has a strange mechanism that suggests it can lean back, but she’s not sure why. She’s never seen anything quite like it.

“Catra.” The word is a sigh, full of resignation. “You are a difficult child.”

Catra flinches at the words, but Shadow Weaver only continues, unperturbed. “You are disobedient and rude, and worse, you drag Adora down with you. Had I known that you would cause such trouble, I would never have kept you.”

With every word, Catra sinks deeper into the chair. It’s worse, almost, because there’s no fury there, just simple disappointment. As if she’s given up. 

As if she’s going to get rid of Catra entirely.

Shadow Weaver touches a hand to the Black Garnet, then turns. She crosses the room and Catra rears back, but she doesn’t touch her. She only kneels in front of her, both hands placed on the seat of the chair Catra is too small for, placating.

“Unfortunately, I can’t get rid of you.” Her masked eyes roam over Catra, and this time, there’s a flicker of displeasure. “Without destroying so much of Adora’s history.” 

Catra doesn’t understand what she’s talking about, but a knot of dread is forming in her stomach. She feels, suddenly, nauseous. 

“So I’m going to strike a deal.” This time, Shadow Weaver does reach up to push back a lock of Catra’s hair, and because she doesn’t understand what’s going on, because she’s frozen with fear, she lets her. “When I finish with Adora, she isn’t going to remember your affections. And you are never going to initiate again, do you understand?”

The first, stupidest thing rises to Catra’s mind, and she says it without thinking. “But I didn’t start—”

“Silence!” Her voice hits like a whip, and Catra rears back without thinking. Shadow Weaver’s gaze narrows, and she withdraws her hand,

“I do not care how it happened,” she tells her, each word had as a stone. “Whether Adora initiated this time or not, I know that you are the one who is manipulating her, and you are the reason she falls behind in training. You are a distraction, and it’s only thanks to Adora that you’re still here at all, do you understand?”

She pauses, waiting for Catra to nod. She does, slowly, a sick feeling whirling in her gut. She can hardly understand what’s happening, not because the words don’t make sense, but because it doesn’t seem possible.

Shadow Weaver can’t just take her memory. She can’t take Adora with a snap of her fingers, and erase all the things that make them friends.

It can’t happen. It just can’t. There’s no way— 

“Get up.” Shadow Weaver rises, and gestures that Catra does the same. She does, dizzy and feeling like she’s about to be sick, and stumbles out of the Black Garnet chamber. She nods when Adora looks up, her face white with fear, and doesn’t look back when she hears Shadow Weaver call Adora softly.

She sits in the same chair Adora had occupied and waits, legs swinging, eyes on the ground. She feels empty, like somebody has taken a spoon and scooped out all her insides.

When Adora stumbles out, not ten minutes later, she doesn’t take Catra’s hand again.

—————

For two years, they don’t hold hands, and in that time, it becomes normal. Or, not normal, exactly, but expected, a defined boundary between the two of them. Once, two weeks after the incident—and she can only refer to it as the incident in her mind, nothing more—Adora reaches for her hand, utterly thoughtless, and Catra snatches hers away as if burned.

Adora doesn’t get it. Then again, she doesn’t have to. She looks at Catra for a second, confused and hurt, and Catra just tosses it away with a shrug.

“We’re not little kids anymore,” she says, and that gets through to Adora, because only a few days earlier they’d started weapons training, and she knows that Adora is desperate to be a trained cadet. One of the big kids.

Adora drops it, and so does Catra, and for two years they don’t touch each other outside of the sparring room.

————

“Psst, hey kid.”

Catra stops in her tracks, fur rising on her neck. Slowly, she turns around.

“What?” She hisses the word, claws sliding out when she sees who called her. It’s an older cadet, marked by her red jacket and the pin on her belt. She has one fist held tightly as if she’s hiding something in it.

The cadet glances around the empty hallway, then back to Catra. She steps forward. “I need you to deliver something for me.”

Catra’s ears flatten, and her tail swings back and forth. “Why should I?”

The cadet frowns, eyes narrowing. “Maybe because I saw you sleeping during your study period last week. Bet the instructor would want to hear about that, huh?”

Catra bristles, but it doesn’t matter. She’s lost, anyway. She can’t even remember if she actually was sleeping, but it makes no difference. If this cadet decides to report her, she’ll be punished either way.

“Fine,” she snarls, and steps forward, looking for the package. “What is it?”

The cadet doesn’t pull a package from behind her back like Catra expects. Instead, she holds out her fist and unwraps her fingers to reveal a folded, slightly crumpled piece of paper. “Here. I need you to deliver it to Cadet Evans. And don’t read it.”

Catra studies the note, frowning. Now she sort of gets why the cadet wants her to deliver it. Cadet Evans’ squad bunks right next to the younger cadet barracks, which is where Catra sleeps. And cadets, for the most part, are forbidden to fraternize with anybody outside their own squad.

She’s never really gotten that, but she’s never really bothered with it either. She’s never wanted to talk to anybody outside her own squad in the first place.

“Fine,” Catra growls, and swipes the note from the cadet’s hand, ignoring her yelp when her claws graze her palm. “Whatever. I’ll do it.”

“Thanks,” the cadet shoots back, but it doesn’t sound at all grateful. Instead, she’s nursing her hand and glaring as she turns down the hallway.

Catra ignores this, and glances at the note in her hand. Vaguely, she wonders what it says, then decides that she doesn’t really care.

————

“I could look at your eyes all day?” Adora frowns as she reads the note for the third time. “Why would she tell Cadet Evans that?”

“Beats me.” With Adora sitting on the foot of her bed, Catra has sprawled across the middle and raised both feet, hooking them into the metal springs of the bed above. She uses her feet to push the empty mattress up and down, a useless, repetitive motion. “Have you even seen her eyes? They’re like, blue.”

Adora is looking at her funny, but when Catra shoots her a raised eyebrow look, she looks away, biting her lip.

“Blue isn’t a bad color,” she says, and that’s when Catra recalls that Adora has blue eyes, possibly the brightest blue she’s ever seen, and how could she forget that?

Cadet Evans’ eyes are a dull, boring blue. Adora’s eyes are pretty. Catra wants to tell her that, but her tongue tangles up and the words dangle perilously close to a line she’s not sure should be crossed, so she shuts her mouth and instead says something different.

“It’s okay.” She shrugs, and looks up at the springs above her. “Better than having different colored eyes.”

And she means that, because she hates her own eyes. They’ve always been a source of ridicule, from both the other cadets and the instructors, and even though Catra never sees them except when she looks in the mirror, sometimes she feels like they’ve been burned into her—like she’s been marked out and othered.

It’s not fair. It’s not fair that she have weird eyes and everybody else get normal ones. As if she needed another reason to be different.

“Well I think—” Adora says, then shuts her open mouth and turns a strange color of pink and looks away. Catra doesn’t really get it. 

“What?” she prods, because she’s curious and doesn’t want to deliver this dumb note anyway. Adora doesn’t answer.

“Nothing,” she mutters, but she’s still pink though it’s fading slightly, and Catra wonders briefly if she was going to deliver some remark about Catra’s eyes that she doesn’t want to hear. That could be it. Adora has always said she’s liked her eyes, but how is Catra to know she isn’t lying? How is she to know that Adora likes her anyway at all?

After all, Shadow Weaver had told her so many times that she’s dragging her back.

When Adora doesn’t answer, Catra huffs, hurt rising in her for no reason, then sits up and snatches the note back.

“Whatever,” she grumbles, and before Adora can protest, slides off the bed. “I gotta deliver this anyway. See ya.”

“Catra—!” Adora calls, but she’s too late. Catra is already out the door and gone, tail lashing behind her. 

She doesn’t see it until the next day. Actually, it’s the next afternoon, because she’d had training all morning and hadn’t had time to use her textbooks, but when she opens up _Intermediate Strategy_ , a piece of paper flutters out.

Catra has good reflexes, and catches the paper before it can hit the ground, and therefore be seen by other eyes. Her heart is beating fast, because even though there’s no reason to think this is anything other than a scrap of paper, it’s folded in two and clearly has been tucked away for her to find.

When she looks up, Adora isn’t looking at her. She has her eyes on the instructor, and her pencil is tapping a quiet rhythm into her desk.

Slowly, Catra unfolds the note, then reads it once, twice. She’s blushing by the time she reads it the third time, and swallowing hard, though she’s not sure why. She has the intense urge to giggle, which is really dumb, because she’s a big kid now, and therefore does not giggle.

But Adora’s loopy, scrawled handwriting teeters across the paper, replete with a stick figure drawing of Catra herself.

_I could look at your eyes all day_ , it says, with a little smiley at the end, and somehow just looking at it fills Catra’s whole heart until she can’t breath.

“Catra? Is something wrong?” The instructor’s voice is cold, and holds a warning. Catra’s head jerks up, and she flushes slowly to the titter of the class.

“No, ma’am,” she mutters, and drops her gaze to the desk, claws curling into the paper. She doesn’t tear it, though. She holds it tightly, as carefully as she possibly can, and when she looks up several minutes later, Adora is smiling at her.

—————

_Blue eyes look really pretty on y—_

_When I look at your e—_

_I think that—_

“No, no, no,” Catra mutters, crossing the last one out with a swipe of her pen, her tongue stuck out in frustration. “Ugh, how is this so hard?”

“What’s so hard?”

“Adora!” Catra shrieks, and jumps about two feet in the air, then spins around, shoving the paper underneath her books. Adora gives her an odd look, and settles on the edge of the bed, one hand playing absentmindedly at a loose string. “When did you get here?”

“Right now,” Adora replies, still looking confused. Her eyes drift to the books Catra is hiding behind her, and something clicks. “Oh. Intermediate strategy?”

“Uh—sure.” Catra nods, head bobbing up and down maybe a bit too hard. “It’s, uh, I didn’t really get the lesson. That much.”

Because she hadn’t been able to get a certain note out of her mind, much to the fury of the instructor, who had taken her aside after class and berated her so harshly Catra had seriously wondered if she’d been about to get booted. But the instructor had let her go in the end, and Catra had walked back to the barracks as if on air, the floor feeling like clouds beneath her feet.

“I could help,” Adora says, and reaches for the books. “Here—”

“No!” Catra yelps, then at the baffled expression on Adora’s face, backtracks. “I mean…I’ll open them. Here.”

She pulls the correct book from beneath her and flips it to the page without looking, then shoves it at Adora. Adora takes it and, to Catra’s surprise, doesn’t put it upon her lap but instead flops beside Catra, so close they’re nearly touching.

“Here,” she says, and points to the first paragraph. “This part basically summarizes the main points. If we—”

“Sure,” Catra agrees, but she’s not really listening. Instead she’s looking at Adora, who’s got her face screwed up in concentration and one strand falling from her ponytail, and she smells a little bit like sweat, but Catra doesn’t really mind because she’s used to it.

She looks pretty like that, biting her lip as she concentrates, and it’s all Catra can think about, even though she should be paying attention.

For the second time that day, she doesn’t learn a thing.

————

_You look really pretty when you’re thinking._

She signs the note with a drawn approximation of Adora’s face, then slides it inside her textbook when she’s not looking. For yet another class she doesn’t pay attention, too caught up in the nervous knowledge that Adora is about to read her note, Adora might hate it, Adora might—

“Adora? Something you care to share with the class?”

Adora is flushing a bright red, red as an apple Catra once stole from the kitchens, but she looks up and shakes her head.

“No, ma’am,” she says, and the instructor frowns, but doesn’t question it. Adora is a star cadet, after all. She would never get into trouble.

But once the instructor looks away, Adora turns in her seat and gives Catra such a bright smile, so entirely blinding, that for a moment Catra sees stars.

————

_I like your hair up._

_Your smile is pretty : )_

_You’re pretty cool, for a square_

_I’m the coolest square you’ll ever meet_

_I wish I could have all my classes with you_

_So you admit you like me?_

They go back and forth for weeks, never more than a note every other class, and they’re careful, so careful. There’s something illicit and thrilling about the whole affair, even though Catra knows they’re doing nothing wrong. The other cadet, she hears, got in trouble for fraternizing outside of her squad, but Catra knows that doesn’t apply to them. They’re in the same squad, go to the same classes, do everything together. They’re not breaking any rules.

On the day Catra passes a note— _I’ll never admit I like you, nerd_ —to Adora, everything is perfectly normal. The instructor doesn’t notice. None of the instructors have noticed, because they’re too busy, or too dumb, Catra likes to think, to see anything beyond their own stupid noses.

“Catra, Adora,” the instructor calls as they’re filing out of class. “Stay for a moment, please.”

Immediately, Catra’s face goes hot as Adora casts her a strange look. Catra just shakes her head, but a strange, terrible feeling is growing in her stomach, even though she knows she’s done nothing wrong. They’ve done nothing wrong.

The instructor doesn’t even look up as they stand at attention in front of her. She just studies a paper on her desk, and Catra, with a wayward glance down, can tell it’s not even about them. It’s a stupid disciplinary form for Kyle, because he keeps forgetting his homework.

“Ah, Shadow Weaver.” The instructor glances over Catra’s shoulder, gives a genial nod, and Catra’s whole body goes cold.

_No, no, no, no, no—_

“You called?” Shadow Weaver sweeps into the room, casting one cold glance over Catra and Adora before turning to the instructor. Shadows slide behind her, whispering around their feet, tugging at their trousers.

The instructor sighs, and heaves herself to her feet. “You were right about the notes,” she says, and reaches into her desk, then places something upon the flat of it. It’s crumpled and smashed like it’s been stepped on, but Catra can make out enough to know what it says.

_I wish I could have all my classes with you_

Beside her, Adora sucks in a breath, and Catra wants to cry. She can feel it in her, the sob of anger and fear, and it’s partially directed at Adora but it’s mainly directed at herself, because _she_ wrote the note, and she just _had_ to give it to her—

“I see.” Shadow Weaver’s gaze moves to Catra, so cold and stark she feels like there’s no mask there at all, like she’s peering directly into Catra’s soul and picking her to pieces. “So you never could keep your hands off her, you little—”

“Ahem,” the instructor coughs nervously, and in a distant, dizzy way, Catra gets the feeling that she doesn’t want to see this. Shadow Weaver pauses, looks at the instructor, then sighs.

“Yes, you’re right. Adora, come with me.” She extends a hand, as if she expects Adora to take it. Catra wants to scream at her not to, wants to yell and kick and tear, but fear has her frozen in place.

“But Shadow Weaver, I still have cl—” Adora starts, but one look silences her. She glances at Catra, her face drawn with fear, then reaches out to take the extended hand.

Something inside Catra collapses.

“Shadow Weaver, please don’t—” she begins, but Shadow Weaver only silences her with a wave of her hand.

“Quiet, you insolent child!” She whirls around then, her hand still clutching Adora’s, and pins her with such a glare that Catra takes a step back. “I should have expected you to pull something like this sooner or later. I’m only surprised it took so long. You—” This is directed at Adora— “will come with me. And you, Catra—”

She stops, cocking her head, and studies her. Slowly, a smile spreads across her face. 

“You will come to,” she says. “Perhaps you’ll learn something.”

The way to the Black Garnet chamber is silent, but charged with something Catra thinks only she can feel. It squeezes in her chest, too-heavy and too-big, and several times she glances at Adora, but doesn’t say anything.

She doesn’t look nervous enough, she thinks. Adora is quiet and fidgety, her eyes wide as they pass through the doors of the Black Garnet chamber, but she doesn’t exactly look _scared_.

“You—stand over there.” Shadow Weaver directs Catra with an extended finger, and Catra obeys, fear coursing through her. “You—into that chair.”

“Yes, Shadow Weaver.” Adora climbs up into the chair that’s too big for her, with the strange straps and the headband Catra hadn’t noticed the last time. Shadow Weaver doesn’t direct her to use these, however, but instead turns to the Black Garnet and pressed her hand to it, drawing energy. Then she turns and glides across the room, kneeling before Adora.

“You don’t need these, do you?” she says, and extends one finger to the straps. Adora glances at them, eyes wide, then shakes her head nervously.

“Good girl,” Shadow Weaver coos, and before Adora can react, before even Catra can shout out a warning, she presses a hand to the side of her head, tight enough to tear out hair should she pull. Adora shrieks, and then her eyes roll back in her head and she shakes like she’s been electrocuted, like she’s dying, and it’s all Catra can do not to scream but she’s caught in her own terror—

Shadow Weaver pulls her hand away, and Adora slumps back against the chair. She’s completely unconscious.

“Take her back to the barracks.” Her voice is entirely business like. “She’ll wake up in an hour. In the meantime, Catra—”

She turns then, and stalks forward, bending down when she reaches Catra so as to be eye level. It’s terrifying to have her so close, and Catra wants to curl away from her and let out the sob that’s building in her throat, but all she does is take a shaky breath and force herself to remain standing.

“I hope you learned a lesson,” she says, her voice soft and cool. “I hope you understand that for the greater good—”

She glances back to Adora regretfully, then turns to Catra.

“It would be better if you took some responsibility for your actions,” she says. “Do you understand?”

Catra understands. She glances to Adora’s prone form on the chair, and swallows hard.

She nods.

—————

For a long time, Catra doesn’t speak to Adora. Oh, she talks to her when she has to, and when they’re forced to pair up in classes and sparring and other areas of training, but they aren’t friends.

They can’t be friends. She tells herself this again and again, like throwing ration bars at a wall until they stick. They’re not friends because it’s wrong, because Shadow Weaver will hurt Adora, or hurt Catra, or hurt them both until she decides they’ve learned their lesson.

Adora has clearly learned it. She doesn’t hold hands and she doesn’t pass Catra notes, but she looks at Catra sometimes, her gaze filled with an emotion Catra can’t parse. Like she misses her, but that can’t be right, because Catra has told herself time and time again that eventually Adora will give up on her.

One day, on the cusp of Catra’s twelfth birthday—and she knows it’s her birthday because she bullied the date out of an instructor—Adora sneaks into her bed, an hour before they’re due to awaken. There are no windows in the barracks, but Catra has always been good at telling the time, and she can sense, when Adora trips and falls onto her legs, that it’s too early to be awake.

“Adora, what the hell?” She’s picked up cursing from the older cadets too, and uses her new skill whenever possible. “What are you doing?”

Adora disentangles herself from Catra’s blanket and looks at her sheepishly. She’s got something behind her back, and by the way she keeps twitching, it’s clearly meant for Catra.

“It’s your birthday soon, isn’t it?” she says, and casts a guilty glance around like she knows she’s not supposed to be there. “I, uh, got something for you.”

“You remembered it was my birthday?” Catra asks stupidly, even though they’ve both known each others’ birthdays for years. Adora nods, ducking her head as red slowly stains her cheeks.

“Yeah, I, um—stole this for you.”

She removes her hand from behind her back and holds out an object. Catra stares at it, dumbfounded. It’s an apple, shiny and red, like the one she’d stolen from the kitchens years ago. She’s never had one since. She doesn’t think Adora even knows what it is.

“You stole this?” She looks from Adora to the apple, and Adora nods eagerly. 

“Yeah! Well, I had to bribe one of the cadets to show me where the food was, but he, uh, called it an apple?” She screws up her face and pronounces the word weirdly. “He said they were really good. And I know that you don’t like me anymore and we don’t hang out, but I thought, maybe—”

She’s turning redder and redder by the minute, red enough to match the apple, and when her words fail her she just shoves the apple onto Catra’s bed and stands, as if she can’t take it one more minute.

“I’m sorry I messed up,” she says, with an air that suggests she has no idea what she did but means it all the same. “But, um, happy birthday, Catra.”

She tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear, then turns and practically runs to her bed before Catra can so much as say thank you. Catra watches her go, then picks up the apple and turns it over in her hands slowly, reverently.

Throwing ration bars at a wall until they stick. One by one, she can feel them sliding to the ground.

————

She waits until nightfall, and then sneaks into Adora’s bed, the still-intact apple clutched in her hand. She’s careful, more careful than Adora, so Adora doesn’t even realize she’s there until Catra is perched at the foot of her bed.

“Hi,” she says as Adora sits up sleepily. Even in the darkness, she can see her eyes widen. “Uh, I wanted to say thank you.”

“For what?” Adora asks, and then something clicks. “Oh. For the—?”

“Yeah.” Catra swallows hard, then nods. “I thought maybe we could, um, share it.”

She thrusts out the apple, holds it between them, and Adora stares at it. Something odd is sparkling in her eyes, and Catra wants so badly to make sense of it.

Then she looks up, and that sparkle in her eye might as well be stars. “You really want to share it with me?”

Catra nods. “Yeah, I mean it’s only fair, right?” She pushes the apple closer. “Here. You take the first bite.”

Adora stares at her, then looks at the apple. Slowly, as if dealing with something incredibly valuable, she picks up the apple and studies it. It’s nearly as good as in the morning, despite a small bruise that formed from where Catra had to hide it under the springs of her bed. 

Slowly, Adora brings it to her mouth and takes a big bite. Catra watches her cheeks puff out, and suppresses the urge to laugh.

Ration bars sliding to the ground. It’s not sticking, she can feel it, all her resolve as loose as putty, and she sliding to the floor with it.

It’s worth it.

“This is amazing!” Adora gasps, and that’s when Catra knows, without a doubt, that she was right. It is one hundred percent worth it, because Adora is grinning and her eyes are wide and she looks as if Catra just gave her every answer to the end of term exam. “Why don’t we get these?”

Catra shrugs. “Because we’re just cadets, I guess.”

Adora nods, still chewing, then shoves the apple back to Catra. “Here, you have to try this.”

Catra hesitates. She wants to tell Adora that she’s already had one, that she doesn’t really care about the apple and anyway it’s so much better to watch Adora eat it, but she can’t say any of that. So instead, she shrugs.

“I’m not really hungry,” she says, and Adora’s face falls. 

“But it’s your apple,” she says, and she’s so utterly downhearted that Catra is about to take back her words. “Do you not like them?”

“Huh?” Catra’s head snaps up. “What? No, I just mean—I had a big dinner. Besides, it’s fun watching you eat it.”

Fun watching her eat it? Geez, she wonders, can she be even more of a creep?

Apparently not. Because Adora raises her eyebrow, and stares at her until Catra blushes.

“And I’ve tried one before anyway,” she murmurs, glancing away. When she summons the courage to look up again, Adora is watching her with a look she can’t place. She’s still got her mouth full, but she looks oddly thoughtful as she chews once, then swallows.

“You didn’t try this one, though,” she says, and glances at the apple, frowning when she notices the brown bits. Clearly, she hadn’t expected that to happen. “Uh. Is it supposed to look like that?”

“Yeah, they go bad fast,” Catra says with a wave of her hand. “I mean, you can still eat it. It just won’t be as fresh.”

“Oh.” Adora’s expression drops into disappointment, and Catra wants to give herself a slap in the head. How did she manage to ruin this? And why is she so nervous? She’s never been like this around Adora.

Well, it’s been a while since she’s been around Adora.

Then, a mischievous expression passes over Adora’s face, one Catra has rarely seen but recognizes all the same. It’s the kind she gets when she has an idea, whether it be an idea to tease Catra, or to steal ration bars from the kitchen, or to do something equally dumb that will get them both in trouble.

“I know how you could still taste it, though,” she says, and when Catra only tilts her head, confused, she carefully sets the half-eaten apple on her blanket and leans forward. “Want to?”

Catra draws back, nose wrinkling and heart pounding though she doesn’t know why. “Ew, are you going to lick me?”

Adora giggles quietly, hard enough to snort. “No! Trust me, I saw one of the older cadets do it to another cadet. They really liked it. I promise.”

When Catra continues to look at her doubtfully, she raises her eyebrows and waggles them in a way that is incredibly stupid and entirely endearing. “Catraaaaaa….”

“Fine!” Catra groans, and leans forward, trying to quash the strange feeling in her stomach. It’s all fluttery, like she’s going to be sick even though she doesn’t feel ill, and it intensifies as Adora leans forward and, ever so gently, presses her lips to hers.

This is wrong. Catra knows it in an instant, knows that this is exactly the kind of thing Shadow Weaver warned her about, and at the same time can’t bring herself to care. Because it’s the most amazing thing, in a weird sort of way, like Adora is taking a piece of herself and giving it to her, like they’re making a promise to each other.

Adora pulls back, and she’s all flushed and disheveled even though all they did was touch lips lightly. Probably, the disheveled part comes from the way she keeps pushing back her hair, like she’s really nervous Catra hated it.

“Was that okay?” she asks, and Catra only nods dumbly, her heart too swollen to speak.

“The older cadets did that?” she manages to squeak out, and Adora laughs quietly.

“Yeah.” She nods solemnly, as if it’s the most important thing in the world. Catra could tell her she’s right. “They called it, um—” she screws up her face— “kissing.”

Kissing. Catra repeats the word in her head, flips it around and turns it back and forth. There’s something special about it, she can tell, and maybe that’s why Shadow Weaver forbids it. Because in one movement Adora has dissolved all that strange discord between them, wiped away everything Catra has been holding to her chest, and she knows it’s wrong, but with Adora sitting there all sheepish and excited, she can’t bring herself to say it.

So instead she says, “Yeah, I think it’s, uh—not allowed.”

Immediately, Adora’s face falls in a familiar way, the way Catra recognizes, when she’s about to get in trouble and she’s torn between whatever it is she wants and the rules that forbid it.

Catra knows what Adora will choose. What she always chooses. And maybe it’s stupid and selfish of her, but before Adora can open her mouth, and stop it before it even begins, she says, “But it can be a secret.”

Adora pauses, and Catra can see her thinking it over. It takes her a second, a second that has Catra hanging on like her entire life counts on it. Then, a slow smile spreads across her face and she nods.

“A secret,” she says, then amends, “our secret.”

Catra can’t help the relief from splitting her chest. Not just because of the kissing thing, and because Adora chose her— _she chose her_ —but because it means their distance is over again. And maybe it’s forbidden, but now that she’s sitting here on Adora’s bed, she wonders how she was ever able to keep away from her best friend.

They’re stuck together, aren’t they? Maybe because Shadow Weaver is right, and Catra is weak, and always has been weak, but Adora wants it too, doesn’t she? She _wants_ to be Catra’s friend, against all odds, and maybe it’s wrong and she’s slowing Adora down, but doesn’t Adora get a choice too?

Adora _should_ get a choice too. She tells herself this, firms it in her mind, and when she stands to finally leave, she’s trying not to smile.

“Hey, Catra?” Adora is lying back in her bed, her scratchy blanket pulled up to her chin, and she’s grinning too, all loopy in a way that makes Catra’s heart go funny. “I’m glad we’re friends again.”

“Yeah.” Catra had been trying not to smile, but this time, she’s not able to stop it from creeping over her face.

—————

They’re careful, ever so careful, and despite everything, despite the instructors and the other cadets and Shadow Weaver’s ever watchful eye, it works.

“You can’t talk about it,” Catra tells Adora, and Adora nods solemnly and even though she’s clumsy with secrets and she can’t act for anything, she’s careful too.

They kiss at night when the other cadets are asleep, and sometimes they kiss in the daytime when nobody is around, in the locker rooms after a shower or in an empty classroom, and they’re so careful, that Catra really thinks they’re going to get away with it. That she’s managed to work around Shadow Weaver and her dark magic, that she’s bamboozled the entire Horde into turning the other eye, because really, why would anybody be watching them anyway? They’re just kids, thirteen now if they’re keeping track, and sure they may be intermediate cadets but they’re not seniors. They’re nobodies.

She should have known it wouldn’t last.

When the hammer falls, it’s Catra’s fault, and she thinks about this for months on end. Has nightmares about it, the moment of mistake, and wakes up sweating in the middle of the night, to the consternation of Adora and the teasing of the other cadets. 

All she did was fall asleep. The problem is, she fell asleep in Adora’s bed, exhausted after a long day of training and buoyed by a kiss Adora had pressed to her lips that had left her whole brain tingling like a foot fallen asleep. There are new ways of kissing, she’s learned, with tongue and with clothes off and other things, but they haven’t tried any of that. It all seems grown up and foreign, and Catra just wants to stay in this little bubble of the two of them, her and Adora and her lips that taste like apples even though it’s been nearly a year since they’ve shared one.

When she wakes up, she’s alone, and the other cadets are asleep. It’s nowhere near morning, she can tell that much, and she lies there for a while, slow dread working up her spine, as she tries to keep it from turning into panic.

It doesn’t work like this, she thinks desperately. There should be screaming and fights and Catra with her body between Adora and Shadow Weaver, not an empty bed and the covers pulled back like Adora had shifted them ever so quietly in order not to wake her. Like she’d been called in the middle of the night for extra training that Catra knows isn’t happening, because instead—

Catra whimpers, bites her tongue on it, then grabs the covers and yanks them over her head. She’s trembling so hard she can’t breathe, and her sharp teeth are clacking together, and she knows if she really does let out a sob, she’ll wake the other cadets. 

This can’t be happening, she thinks desperately, because they were so careful, and Adora—

She squeezes her eyes shut until stars burst behind her eyelids, and because she can’t do anything else, she waits.

It’s no more than an hour, maybe less. Catra still has the covers pulled over her head, but when she hears the footsteps she peels back one corner and watches them, heart scraping the pit of her stomach.

Adora’s movements are clumsy, her stocking feet soft against the cold metal floor. Her eyes are half-lidded, and she sways as she climbs into bed, helped along by Shadow Weaver, who treats her gently, as she would a small child. Shadow Weaver waits as she crawls into bed, then turns and crouches by Catra. Even with the blankets covering her, a shield against the world, Catra knows that Shadow Weaver is aware she’s awake.

“I know what you did.” Her voice is a hiss, sharp enough to cut. “I have seen everything. I had thought you had learned your lesson.”

Catra opens her mouth to respond, even though some part of her brain is telling her not to be an idiot, but before she can, shadows slither up beneath the blanket, wrapping around her limbs and trapping her. Catra tries to cry out, tries to squirm, but the shadows are stronger than her and they swarm into her mouth, cutting her off.

“You are insolent and selfish,” Shadow Weaver continues, as the shadows wrap tighter around her, squeezing and choking. “If I could get rid of you, I could. As it is—”

She makes a strange movement with her hand, and pain slices through Catra, more pain than she’s ever felt, though she somehow knows instinctively that nothing physical is happening to her. There’s no tear of muscle, no spill of blood. Just pain, slow and agonizing, and she wants to scream but she can’t.

“Let that be a lesson to you,” she says. “I am always watching, and you are not as smart as you think you are.”

She snaps her fingers then and the shadows retreat, so quick it’s as if they were never there at all. Catra flops onto the bed, gasping, phantom pain still arcing through her body, and then rolls onto her back and watches Shadow Weaver leave.

It takes her five minutes to pull herself from Adora’s bed and into her own. By then, the other cadets are starting to stir, sheets rustling, except for Adora, who snores as if she’s been knocked unconscious. Possibly, she has. Catra watches her from her own bed, tail flicking limply, and wonders if she’ll ever get to be friends with her again.

It doesn’t seem fair.

—————

Catra tries to stay away, she really does. She shoves her hurt and her feelings down, and tries to go back to the way things were, before her birthday and the apple and that kiss, and all that had followed.

Adora really doesn’t remember anything. Not a drop. When Catra’s birthday rolls around, she doesn’t even mention it, and when Adora’s rolls around, she doesn’t seem to remember that either. Once, Catra asks her about apples—hoping against all hope, and knowing that she shouldn’t—and Adora just stares at her like she’s grown another tail.

They’re back to square one, only this time there’s no more squares, nowhere else to go. Shadow Weaver, for the first few months, sticks close by Catra and Adora, her voice sickly sweet and her gaze ever sharp, and Catra knows that she has no chance.

Sometimes, she dreams of escape. She dreams of a different world outside of the Fright Zone, where nobody cares about herself and Adora, where it’s not wrong to want to kiss, and touch, and hold. Where they can sleep in the same bed and be friends, and nobody will ever say a thing.

She dreams of apples, and the taste of Adora’s lips on hers, and as time passes, she starts to wonder about all the other things, the things they never got to try. 

She starts to notice things too, things that she knows she shouldn’t, and she keeps these to herself because there’s no other choice. She notices the way Adora’s hair falls, and the soft way she smiles, and her stupid, snorting laugh.

She’s known about these things before, of course. Really, she could trace every part of Adora without a picture. But the difference is now she notices them, and when she notices them, blood rushes to her cheeks and her stomach flutters and she feels that strange ill feeling she used to get when they kissed, only now all she has to do is look.

And Adora notices her looking.

“Hey.” Halfway through study hall, Adora draws Catra’s attention with a nudge of her foot.

“What?” she says stupidly. Adora has a strand of hair falling into her face again. She never does her ponytail up right, no matter how many times Catra offers to help her.

Adora shoves her in the shoulder. “You’re staring at me. What, do I have something on my face?”

“Huh? No,” Catra says, but internally she’s cursing, and her tail is giving her away, curling around her foot the way it always does when she lies to Adora.

Only when she lies to Adora. Sometimes, she feels like her own body is pitted against her.

“I mean,” she hurries to amend, “yeah. That dumb pointy nose.”

“Hey!” Adora brings one hand to her nose, but she sticks out her tongue too and that’s how Catra knows there’s no hard feelings. “My nose isn’t pointy. It’s average.”

“Sure.” Catra grins and leans back in her chair, stretching her hands behind her head. It feels good, bickering like this, because they don’t really do it anymore. Not when Catra is trying so hard to watch her step, and Adora lags behind, confused and, Catra sometimes thinks, hurt.

“Not as pointy as your teeth,” Adora shoots back, and Catra’s smile widens. She’s not sure why, but something flutters pleasantly in her stomach at the thought that Adora has been paying attention to her mouth, her lips.

Or maybe she’s just getting ahead of herself. After all, Adora doesn’t remember anything. Does she?

“So you’ve only now noticed my teeth?” For show, Catra grins wider, accentuating her canines. Inexplicably, Adora blushes, and Catra’s heart beats faster.

It’s not all gone. She wants to sing it. There’s some part of Adora that still cares about her, that still looks at her and thinks of her and—

“I don’t care about your teeth,” Adora mutters, which doesn’t make any sense, and ducks her head. They’re sitting alone, Catra realizes all of a sudden, the study hall emptied out completely. When had Lonnie and Rogelio left? They’d been studying over in the corner moments ago, Catra could have sworn.

But now it’s just the two of them, and all of a sudden Catra is hyperaware of the fact. Adora is too, maybe, because she’s growing redder and glancing around like she’s about to do something dumb, and part of Catra, as the realization kicks in, screams at her to stop it. To jump up and rush away, to push Adora to the side, to snap something mean like she’s always so good at, to do— _something_.

She doesn’t do anything. She’s frozen in time, stuck as Adora glances up at her shyly, then lets out a laugh. It’s not her typical snorting laugh, but something a little more awkward, a little more uncertain.

“I—” she says, and then breaks off with another little laugh. “I guess I thought—”

“Thought what?” Catra asks, her heart pounding like a drum. Adora catches her lip between her teeth, and smiles.

“I sort of thought you were looking at me,” she says.

“I was,” Catra says, and she can’t move again, she’s frozen in both ecstasy and horror, because Adora _remembers_ , somehow, and it’s simultaneously the best and worst thing to happen to her. “So?”

“So…I thought you meant….” She pushes that stupid strand of her back, her eyes incredibly indecisive, and then as Catra watches something firms.

“Adora—” she tries to say, but doesn’t get it out, and part of her doesn’t want to. Because before she can protest, before she can do anything, Adora leans forward and presses her lips to hers.

It lasts only a second. Then Adora pulls away, her eyes wide like she’s the one surprised.

“S-sorry,” she stutters almost immediately. “I—I don’t know why—”

She doesn’t get to finish either, because before she can, Catra leans forward and kisses her back.

—————

It only takes a week this time. A week, and it’s the best week Catra’s ever had, like everything’s turned right side up and she’s walking on clouds, and all she can think about is Adora, Adora, Adora—

Shadow Weaver finds them in a closet seven days after that first, unexpected kiss, and this time, she doesn’t bother with threats.

“You,” she hisses, and tears Catra out of the closet, tossing her on the floor like she weighs no more than a pillow. “You disgusting, insolent—”

“Shadow Weaver, it was my—” Adora tries, but Shadow Weaver silences her with a hand that flings out and wraps a shadow around her mouth, muffling a scream.

“No it wasn’t,” she snarls, and her eyes are on Catra the whole time, boring right through her, her gaze cutting her to pieces. “It was her, it’s always her. She knows not to do this. She knows the rules.”

Adora can’t speak, but her eyes move to Catra, and in them, Catra can see the question, just barely edging on betrayal. Always?

“I’m sorry,” she wants to say, but even though there’s nothing stopping her, she can’t. The words catch on tears in her throat, but she swallows those too, because she can’t cry. Not in front of her.

_It’s not fair, it’s not fair, it’s not fair, it’s not—_

Shadow Weaver sniffs in disgust, and turns toward Adora.

“Adora.” Her voice, slimy-sweet, makes Catra want to gag. “I’m afraid you’ll have to come with me.”

Adora can’t speak, but her eyes are large with fear. She nods.

No. Catra can’t do this. She can’t see this happen, not again, not—

“Don’t take her.” She’s on her knees before she realizes, tears building even though she swallowed them, damn it, and she clambers toward Shadow Weaver like a fool who’s already lost. “Please don’t, it’s not fair, you can’t—”

Shadow Weaver doesn’t reply. She only sneers, with such disgust that Catra practically feels it, and reaches for Adora.

“NO!” Catra lunges for her, but it’s too late. They’re gone, the both of them, nothing but the scent of dark magic lingering in the air, and Catra alone.

Again.

“NO!” Catra kicks a chair, sending it flying into the wall with a crash, but nobody comes running. Nobody comes to check on her. She stares blankly at the chair, one wheeled foot spinning, then sinks to her knees and sobs.

—————

By the time Catra makes it back to the barracks, her tears have dried and she’s hollow in a way she’s never really felt before. Like she’s all scabbed over, inside her heart and out, and maybe this time, maybe this time, she’s done with it for good.

Adora is asleep on her bed when she enters, and Catra approaches her mechanically, her legs moving without thought. She sits at the end of the bed, too empty to really care if somebody sees her, and notices, in a distant way, that the one loose strand of hair is hanging over her forehead again.

After a few minutes, Adora starts to stir. She shifts, then opens first one eye, then another. Then she sees Catra, and a slow grin cracks over her face.

“Hey…Catra.” She sounds loopy, and Catra remembers that she always sounds loopy after these things. “Did I…get hit on the head?”

Catra hesitates. There’s a bruise near her hairline, steadily growing, and she’s not sure what it means. She doesn’t want to know. 

“Yeah,” she lies—though it’s a lie only in the details. “You got knocked out in a sparring match. I carried you back here.”

“Oh.” Adora grins, totally out of it, and she looks at Catra, really looks at her, with eyes sparkling like the sun. “My…” The words are punctuated by a yawn. “…hero.”

The scab falls off as if it had never been there at all, and in its place is only tender new skin. Catra feels it, the ache in her heart and her stomach, and as she looks at Adora, she knows that she’s ruined.

Circle back, start again. That’s all they can do, chase each other around a game board until somebody loses. 

Catra wonders when she’s gonna realize that it’ll always be her.

—————

It won’t end, will it? She’s not strong enough, or not moral enough, or selfless enough, to stay away from Adora. She tries, so many times, but it always starts with a stone, wedged loose from a mountain, and before she knows it she’s caught in a landslide and she can’t even bring herself to care.

It starts with a look.

It starts with a smile.

It starts with a teasing jab, and one tossed back in return—

It starts and it starts and it starts and it ends—

Sometimes, Shadow Weaver makes her watch. She drags them both to the Black Garnet chamber, Adora nervous and Catra faint, and directs Adora to the chair. Sometimes, Adora fights back. Sometimes, Catra does.

They never win. Over and over again, ‘round the game board, and Catra always plays the losing die. She watches and she screams until Shadow Weaver shuts her up, and then she dreams of it, over and over again, of Adora’s limp body and her fearful expression and the way she never, ever knows what’s coming.

Years pass, and they grow up, and things both change and stay the same. Sometimes, Catra can feel the change in the air, the way that Adora’s looks suddenly shift from one way to another, and sometimes, it takes her completely by surprise.

(Once, Adora pulled her into a storage room, giggling like an idiot, and kissed her senseless, and Catra was so surprised she forgot to be scared, forgot to worry about the future, and in the ten minutes before Shadow Weaver found them, it was the best moment of her life). 

Sometimes, she just feels old. Older than her few years, like she’s lived a hundred lifetimes, or maybe just lived the same one over and over again. Sometimes, when she looks at Adora, she feels like she’s looking at the Adora she knew at age twelve, who gave her an apple and kissed her to show her what it tasted like.

She clings to that hope, as they years go by, that hope of repetition. Every time Adora gets that look in her eye, or that blush that tells Catra she’s thinking of something else, hope blooms in Catra’s chest like a field full of flowers, and she can make it just a few more days. Every time, it feels like the moment between the trip and the fall, like she hasn’t yet hit the concrete but she knows she’s going to, and all she can do is ball up and wait for the impact.

(And in the meantime, she lets herself fall.)

She thinks of the day when Adora will make Force Captain, and she prays for it. They’ll go together, the two of them, far out of Shadow Weaver’s reach, and then they’ll be free to kiss each other as much as they want, and when Adora gets that look in her eye, Catra won’t be scared that she’ll lose it only a few days later. Because Shadow Weaver tries so hard, but she never really stops her. Adora always comes back, and even if she doesn’t remember the details, the actual things that happen, she finds her way eventually.

She finds Catra. And so Catra has to believe.

She clings to that future like a life buoy, fingers tight enough to hurt, and maybe that’s why it hurts when it all goes sideways.

“You can’t do this!”

She slams the door to the Black Garnet chamber even though she knows, _she knows_ , she’s not allowed in there. She doesn’t even care. Years of traumatizing visits haven’t exactly acclimated her to the place, but it’s familiar enough that in this moment, too angry to see anything but red, it doesn’t bother her.

Shadow Weaver turns, and raises an eyebrow. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“You do!” She teeters on the edge of a step forward, not quite ready to shove herself in Shadow Weaver’s face, but not ready to back down either. “You planned this, that Adora would leave us behind, that she would leave—”

“You?” Amusement twitches across Shadow Weaver’s mask. “Catra, did you really think you would accompany her?”

She’s treating her like a child, and it’s almost worse than her trademark cruelty. It smacks of condescension and victory, and she’s smirking like she knows it. Catra wants nothing more than to wipe it off her face.

“We were supposed to go together,” she snarls, and because she has no other argument, goes for logic. “Our times—”

“Are consolidated,” Shadow Weaver sneers. “One glance can tell that Adora constantly covers for you. You’re worthless on the battlefield, and even worse, you drag Adora down with you.”

It’s a twist of a familiar knife, and so it shouldn’t hurt, but it does anyway. Catra stands there, the future crumbling before her, and wants terribly to cry.

Adora will leave her behind. She’ll leave her behind, with all her memories gone, and she’ll never care about Catra again, because Shadow Weaver has won.

And she knows it.

“I hate you,” Catra snarls, because it’s all she has left. Shadow Weaver just scoffs, but she continues, false bravado pushing her on. “And you think you’ve won, but you haven’t. Adora cares about me. She always has, and this—this promotion isn’t going to stop her!”

She’s shouting now, her voice breaking, but it’s too late to care. “You can take away her—her memory, and all the good things, but she keeps coming back to me, and she always will! She always has.” She finishes quietly, and for a single second, realizes that she’s right. Shadow Weaver hasn’t won. Not yet. She’s never kept Adora from Catra, because Adora cares about her. She always finds a way.

Catra doesn’t trust much, but she trusts that.

Shadow Weaver’s mask twists into a snarl, and in a moment she’s across the room, towering over Catra with the shadows whipping about her in a fury.

“Adora cares about the Horde,” she hisses, far too close for comfort. “Not some weak, pathetic girl who can’t keep her hands to herself. Once she’s a Force Captain, and she’s finally separated from your influence, she’ll realize where her loyalties lie. And she’ll be the soldier she was always meant to be.”

Each word hits Catra like a punch to the gut, hard enough to hurt, but she doesn’t show it. Instead, she swallows hard, then tilts back her chin and looks Shadow Weaver in the eye.

“Guess we’ll see,” she says, and means it.

—————

They’re both wrong. Not a day later, Adora runs away, and when Catra finds her again, begs her to come back, she doesn’t want to. 

For the first time in the many lives they’ve lived, Adora leaves Catra behind on her own accord.

—————

It’s freezing outside. Catra’s wearing a coat for the first time in her life. She hates it, and wishes more than anything that she could be back in the lukewarm halls of the Fright Zone.

“Why do you care about her so much, anyway?”

Catra’s head jerks up. She hits Scorpia with a glare that lets her immediately know this is the wrong question to ask.

“Sorry, sorry!” Scorpia’s claws come up in defense, but to Catra’s surprise—and annoyance—she doesn’t back down. “I just mean—listen, I get it. If you left for the princesses—”

She breaks off, shaking her head, and Catra has to resist grimacing. “I don’t know what I’d do. I mean, I’d be upset, I guess, but—”

She frowns, tilting her head as if trying to puzzle out an equation. “You just…I mean, I sometimes saw you guys around back in the Fright Zone. You just never looked all that close, I guess.”

She shrugs, as if it’s a small matter. A curiosity, nothing more. Catra watches her, and wants to snap back a retort, something that will make her shut up for good, but she can’t quite find one.

_“Whoa, y-you’re good at this,” Adora stutters in surprise. They’re wedged behind a pile of crates near the back hallways, the hallways that nobody ever comes down except for cadets. It’s less risky than other places, but it’s still a risk, and Catra knows they shouldn’t be here at all._

_But she misses her. Two months they’ve barely been talking, Adora brainwashed into obedience and Catra frightened into it, and only in the last week have they said more than a few words to each other._

_She misses her. The thought dances around her head, irresistible and blasphemous. She misses Adora, and she misses her mouth and her smile and her laugh and her hands and—_

_“Am I?” she pulls back, and smiles slightly, tail flicking at the praise. “Really?”_

_“Uh, yeah.” And there are gear turning in her head, Catra can see them, and her heart drops._

_Three times before, she’s come to this conclusion. Three times, and each time Catra’s had to reassure her, and she hates it every time._

_“Did you—”_

_“No,” Catra’s quick to reply, heart pounding. Adora’s eyes widen at the response, and her body relaxes slightly beneath Catra. “Never. Not with anybody else.”_

_“Really?” Adora looks all hopeful, like she wants to be the only one, and Catra’s heart breaks cleanly in two. “Nobody? But you’re—”_

_“I guess I’m just impatient,” Catra says with a grin, and then before Adora can come to anymore conclusions, she leans forward and kisses her again, drowning out any objections._

_There’s a clock, invisible and everpresent, and though Adora can’t hear it, Catra can never shut it off._

“We were friends.” Catra stares at her cup of hot cocoa, her stomach churning. She no longer wants it, but even she’s not so rude as to toss it away. “Close friends.”

“Really?” Scorpia scratches her head. “Because you seemed—”

“Yes.” Catra’s voice cuts off any chance of argument. “Close friends.”

—————

“You know Catra’s favorite number?” Scorpia frowns, betrayal brewing in her mind. “She never told me her favorite number!”

Adora—who is supposed to be her sworn enemy, but is now just kind of floppy—drops her chin and snorts. “She told me when we—when we—”

And then she frowns, her gaze going all weird and distant. “When we—”

“Hmmmph.” Scorpia’s frown deepens into a scowl, and she hoists the fallen hero to set her on a crate. “Don’t move, okay? Stay right there in that chair.”

“Yes, Shadow Weaver.” Adora nods, her eyes already closed. Before Scorpia can turn around, she’s passed out and snoring.

—————

“You don’t have to let Shadow Weaver treat you like that anymore! You could leave, just like I did!”

It’s the ultimate slap in the face, and it hurts more, maybe, than Adora intended. Catra can only stare at her, shocked, because she doesn’t get it, and she never will. And in that moment she wants to tell her everything, about every kiss and touch and look shared between them, about all the things they did and the words they whispered and everything they never got to share. She wants to throw it in her face, how much she cared about her and how much she doesn’t. She wants to hurt Adora, like she’s been hurt so many times.

She doesn’t. Instead, she leaves her behind.

It is, after all, what Adora wants.

—————

“Hey, Catra,” Adora says, right before she smashes the bot to bits, and everybody expects Catra to scoff or sneer or break something, but she doesn’t. Instead, she stares at the left behind static of the video feed, heart thumping against her ribcage, and wonders if anybody else saw what she saw.

_Catra learns when Adora starts to fall in love. She gets a certain look in her eye, and a smile she thinks Catra doesn’t notice, and sometimes, when she’s especially brave, she starts to touch Catra more often, light brushes against her arms and nudges on her shoulders, and it’s nothing, but it makes Catra’s hair stand on end._

_“Hey, Catra,” Adora says once, hanging off her chair. There were brown ration bars today, so they snuck into the kitchens to steal the gray ones and now they’re eating them in an empty classroom that, by all rights, they shouldn’t be occupying. “Want to know something?”_

_“What?” Catra looks at her, her mouth full of gray ration bar, and her heart skips a beat, because Adora is looking at her like that. With her eyes sort of a sparkling and her teeth caught on her lip, like she’s thinking a lot of things and she sort of wants to share them. “Hey, dummy, mouth closed.”_

_Adora shuts her mouth, flushing, but her eyes roam over Catra as if it’s new—and part of Catra wants to scream that it isn’t, they’ve been here—and then she says, “You look stupid with your mouth full.”_

_It’s not what Catra’s expecting, but she flushes anyway, because it doesn’t matter. She knows all the steps now, can do them backwards in her head, and it hurts, god it hurts, but she’s in too deep to keep from tumbling down._

_Two days later they’re kissing, and three weeks later, Shadow Weaver catches them._

“Uh, wildcat?” Scorpia is eying her, concerned. “She just destroyed your bot.”

“Yeah.” Catra swallows, and all she can think about is that grainy-yellow feed, and that _look_ in Adora’s eye— “She did.”

Then she turns on her heel, and leaves without a word.

—————

She corners her in a clearing half a kilometer from the main battle, and pounces, knocking Adora—or She-Ra—into the dirt.

“Turn back,” she says, and Adora just glares at her. 

“Why?” she says. She’s struggling for her sword, which had fallen to the side when she’d hit the ground. Catra sees her reaching, and kicks it away.

“No weapons,” she says, and to prove it, sheathes her claws. “I just want to talk.”

Adora goes still then, and her eyes search Catra’s, suspicious. Catra only stares back, and does some searching of her own, praying she’ll find the very thing she hopes for. 

Then Adora’s eyes flick down to her lips, and she knows that she’s right.

“Fine,” Adora huffs, and a moment later she’s normal sized, though the sword remains in the dirt several feet away. Catra doesn’t let her up.

“What did you want to talk about?” Adora asks after a moment, when it’s clear that Catra is not going to break the silence. “And why did you drag me out here?”

Because Catra is being reckless, and has nothing to lose. Because Shadow Weaver is gone, and in a few days Catra will be sent to the Crimson Waste, and she doesn’t know what will happen. Because she saw that look in Adora’s eye when she kicked in the bot, and it’s been haunting her for the past few days.

“Shadow Weaver is gone,” she says instead. Adora’s eyes widen, and her mouth opens, but then she shuts it and doesn’t say anything. “She’s gone, Adora. She left.”

Adora opens her mouth again, then closes it, like a fish gasping for air. It looks like she has no idea what to say, but after a moment she manages, “So?”

“So?” Catra sits back on her heels, allowing Adora to struggle into a sitting position. “Adora, you can come back! She’s gone, she’s not going to—”

“Catra, that’s not why I left.” A strand of hair is falling into Adora’s face, and Catra watches with a strange, sudden drop in her stomach as she pushes it back. “I left because I saw what the Horde was doing. I couldn’t stay.”

“Oh, spare me the morality speech!” Catra snarls and springs to her feet, anger rising up in her. She wants so badly to take Adora by the shoulders, to remind her of the promise they made, to show her how much she cares, how much Adora is missing, and if only she knew— “Really, Adora? Even after that bitch is gone, I’m still not good enough for you?”

“It was never about that, Catra!” Adora launches to her feet as well, hands balling into fists. “I told you this so many times! I couldn’t stay! Besides, why do you even want to stay? When has the Horde done anything for you?”

Catra only stares at her when she says this, because of course it doesn’t matter. The Horde never did anything for her, but the Horde was their home, and for so long it was just Adora’s and Catra’s, in all the moments they could steal and all the times they couldn’t, and what Adora doesn’t get is that now that Shadow Weaver is gone, they can _claim_ it.

_We lived a thousand lives before this_ , she wants to scream. _You and me lived a thousand lives, and how can they be worth nothing to you?_

“The Horde is my home,” she delivers curtly, tongue cutting on the words. “And it was yours too, Adora. I thought you would remember that.”

But what a fool’s errand it is, she thinks bitterly, because Adora will never remember. Not anything that matters, anyway, not all the important bits. Shadow Weaver has gone and ripped them all out, and even now that she’s gone, Adora won’t even try.

“I remember that,” Adora says quietly, taking Catra by surprise. When she looks up, Adora is watching her in a new-old way, and it hurts like looking at the sun. Hopeful and not, all at once.

“You do?” she says, and Adora just swallows hard, and looks away.

“I mean, I know it was our home. Once,” she clarifies, and Catra’s heart breaks all over again. “But it isn’t anymore, Catra. I can’t go back there.”

“So you’ll just leave me behind?” Catra steps forward without realizing she’s doing so, but Adora doesn’t take a step back. “You really don’t remember anything?”

“I—uh—” They’re close now, closer than they’ve been in a long time outside of battle, and Adora is looking at her in a slightly panicky way. She’s incredibly red. “I mean—”

Shadow Weaver is gone. The thought circulates through her head, egging her on. Shadow Weaver is gone, and this is her chance, if she could just _prove_ it.

“Do you remember this?” Catra says, and she waits a moment, just to make sure, but Adora doesn’t pull away, so Catra leans forward and presses her lips to hers.

It’s light, barely a peck. She holds it for a second, Adora frozen beneath her, seemingly in surprise, then goes to pull away, hope dashing in her chest.

Only for Adora to reach forward, twist her hand into the collar of her shirt, and yank her towards her with such desperate intensity that they nearly collide head-on.

They narrowly avoid it. Instead, Adora’s lips find hers, her movements bordering on the edge of frantic, and Catra, after a stunned moment, responds with such enthusiasm that it knocks all sense from her mind. Instead, she’s only caught in the kiss and the feeling of it, of Adora and her hands and her mouth and everything about her, of all that she’s missed and everything she’s dreamed of, but this time it’s for real and nobody can take this away.

“You remember,” she gasps, her lips grazing Adora’s ear, and Adora just sucks in a shaky, stuttering breath.

“I miss you,” she says, and it’s not what Catra wants to hear, but it’s still entirely worth it.

—————

Two days later, Catra ambushes Adora when she’s alone in the Whispering Woods, pushes her against a tree, and kisses her hard.

“Wh—” Adora is cut off by the press of Catra’s lips on hers, and her cry of protest dies in a muffled yep. “Mm—Catra!”

“Did you think about it?” Catra pulls back, her eyes searching Adora anxiously. “I know you don’t want to come back to the Horde, but Adora, please—”

“Is this a—a—intimidation tactic?” Adora stumbles free from Catra’s grasp, wiping at her mouth as if she’s desperate to wipe the cooties away.

Something in Catra dies, just a little.

“Adora—” she says, and steps forward, but Adora jabs her sword at her and steps back.

“I d-don’t know what you want, Catra,” she says, “but I’m not gonna join the Horde. Not even if you, uh—um—” 

She cuts off, biting her lip, and her eyes flick once over Catra, who just stands there, rooted to the spot. Then, Adora turns on her heel and runs.

—————

Catra sneaks into Bright Moon the night before she leaves for the Crimson Horde. She dodges the guards easily, slides through the window, and though she’s pretty sure she knows where Adora’s room is, she doesn’t go there immediately. 

Instead, she follows the scent of sorcery.

Shadow Weaver is alone when she enters her room, and when she looks up, her mask flickers into a sneer.

“Come to ruin Adora’s life once more?” she asks. Anger rises up in Catra, hot as a flash of fire, but she shuts it down.

“Why would you do it?” she asks. “Why would you defect? Why would you wipe Adora’s mind? Why does it—why does it even matter, anymore?”

Her voice breaks on the last word, and she wants to turn away, but she forces herself to stand her ground. Shadow Weaver doesn’t immediately speak, but only regards her for a long moment, then stands. 

“I am dedicated to Adora, not the Rebellion,” she says. Her voice is a low hiss. “Adora will rise to great things, I am sure of it. She only needs proper guidance.”

Her mouth twists as she regards Catra, who resists the urge to shrink back. “You, however, are still entirely selfish, and insist on distracting her. I knew when she came back with your…scent all over her, that she needed to be fixed.”

“Fixed,” Catra spits, even though something inside her is shriveling to dust, and she can barely catch her breath. She can never win, she realizes, no matter what, because Adora is still under Shadow Weaver’s thumb, and Shadow Weaver is always, always stronger.

Panic flickers in her belly, and she tries to quash it, but she can’t.

“That’s what you call it,” she manages to get out, and now she can feel her chest constricting, hopelessness consolidating in her stomach. “I don’t—I can’t—”

“Please.” Shadow Weaver turns away with a flick of her hand. “Like you ever truly cared for her anyway. You always dragged her down, Catra. The least you could do is admit it.”

“I didn’t,” Catra forces out, but there’s no bite to it. She’s still grappling with the awful truth, trying to wrap her mind around this victory that Shadow Weaver has managed to wrest from her, even though by all rights she should never have won it.

_It’s not fair it’s not fair it’s not—_

“I hate you,” Catra spits out, and it’s all she can say before she’s turning and leaping out the window, weaving between stones and the trees that grow up on the side of the castle.

She hears Shadow Weaver’s laughter in her wake, but she doesn’t look back.

She makes one last visit before she leaves Bright Moon. It’s not more than a minute that she stops, and she doesn’t even go inside.

Instead, she perches on Adora’s windowsill, and watches her sleep. She’s snoring, dead unconscious the way she only is when something’s been done to her. Catra’s seen it often enough. It hurts even now.

She watches her for a long minute, watching her chest rise and fall, and then despair crashes over her, so heavy and thick that she nearly falls from the window. She can taste it on her tongue, a bitter, leaden taste, and it threatens to drown her completely.

She doesn’t drown. She climbs down the tree, and makes it back to the Fright Zone in a daze. She never turns around.

—————

She pulls the lever and she feels crazy as she does it, like she’s lost all her marbles and can’t pick them up, and all she thinks is that Shadow Weaver would be laughing at her right now.

She doesn’t care. Adora begs her not to open it, but Adora doesn’t understand. Adora’s life is in pieces, her brain scattered to bits, and it would be a mercy, at this point, to end the world just for her.

And maybe it’s selfish too, because Catra’s been so cleanly excised from Adora’s world, sometimes she wonders if she ever occupied it at all. Maybe Adora’s memories are the real ones, and Catra’s are fake, and the entire world is laughing at the idiot trying to end the world because she can’t fucking take it anymore.

She pulls the lever, and for a moment, she doesn’t even regret it.

—————

“You won’t win,” she tells Shadow Weaver one day. Adora is slung over her shoulder, utterly unconscious, and with every second she seems to grow heavier. Her screams ring in Catra’s ears, tinny and ever-present. Later, she knows, she’ll dream about them. “She’ll realize, one day.”

Shadow Weaver turns slowly, and pins her with such a harsh glare that Catra’s throat goes dry. “You really think that?” she snarls. “You think that she’ll ever settle for the likes of you? Once she realizes what she’s truly meant for?”

No. Not really. It’s the same fear that haunts Catra every night, that keeps her from sleep, that drags at her during the days. One day, Shadow Weaver will wipe her mind, and Adora won’t come back this time. She’ll forget for good, and leave Catra behind. 

“She will,” Catra replies, chin up, ever defiant. Adora is slipping from her shoulder. “I believe in her.”

“Hmmph.” Shadow Weaver huffs, then turns and flicks her hand. “Get out of my sight, before I choose to erase your memories as well.”

Catra turns, struggling to hoist Adora into a proper position, and steps out of the Black Garnet chamber.

—————

“When do you get to choose? What do you want, Adora?” Tears are dripping from her eyes, and she doesn’t bother to hide them. What’s the point? She’s spent so long hiding everything from Adora; her feelings, and their past, and all the moments they’ve shared.

Do any of them matter? She can’t tell. She’s lost, has been ever since Adora left the Horde in the first place, and she’s never known what to do. She never managed to protect Adora from Shadow Weaver, just like Adora never managed to protect her, and now she’s failing all over again.

It’s the final nail in the coffin. The failsafe shines at Adora’s breast, a warning and an insult, as if Shadow Weaver has placed a mark on her herself. It’s like she’s reaching through Adora just to mock Catra, to remind her that she’ll always fail, that Adora won’t need her, and everything they’ve shared is worth nothing.

Maybe it never was worth anything. Maybe all those years Catra spent hoping were just the dreams of a lonely child, who never deserved the small happiness she got in the first place.

Shadow Weaver always managed to take Adora from her. Now, Adora herself is choosing that very path, and maybe Catra is weak, but she can’t watch it happen. 

So she turns, and with Melog’s help, goes invisible, and together they disappear into the foliage.

Adora shouts her name, despair lacing her tone, but she doesn’t turn back.

—————

“Don’t you get it? I love you! I always have!”

Adora is so shocked to hear those words, and Catra wants to laugh—so she does. She doesn’t get it, is the thing, doesn’t understand the years and the touches and the kisses and all the things that have been stolen from them, and Catra knows that Adora’s moved on, that Shadow Weaver has taken her feelings for good, but she doesn’t care.

It’s a relief just to say them, knowing that nobody is around to stop her. She’s free now, even if it’s too late to matter. 

And then Adora says “I love you too,” and it hits Catra that maybe, just maybe, she’d been right all along.

—————

Adora dreams. 

The war is over, and she doesn’t have to fight. For a long time, she doesn’t do much at all. She trains, and helps to rebuild, and attends strategic peace meetings, but mostly, she’s happy.

Mostly.

She dreams, though. Vividly, but she never remembers them. Not a drop. She only wakes up sweating, a whimper caught on her lip that she can’t let escape, cringing into the pillows like a child.

Catra, somehow, always knows. She’s always awake when Adora is, and she doesn’t prod, does nothing to make her feel ashamed, but she hugs her tight until the feeling passes and she falls asleep again.

Ask anybody, and they’ll tell you that Adora’s the most forgetful person in the world. She’ll study for days, and still forget some key element of a strategic plan. She’s lived in Bright Moon for years, and regularly misremembers the way to the kitchens.

It’s sort of a joke among her friends, her terrible memory. How, they wonder, did Adora memorize every single part of the Princess Prom invite, and still forget Frosta’s age?

Old jokes, hokey and well-worn. It’s a sign, sort of, that they’re friends. Because friends joke like that, don’t they?

Catra never jokes. She doesn’t even like it. When Glimmer brings up that one time Adora forgot the name of the movie they’ve seen five times already, Catra’s face darkens and her lips twist down, and nothing can shift her out of her bad mood.

“It’s fine, Catra,” Adora says with a light nudge to the shoulder, the kind that says _c’mon, please don’t make a scene_. “I really don’t mind.”

“Well I do,” Catra spits, and that’s the end of it.

“Do you remember this?” Catra asks sometimes, and it’s always something silly they’ve done a couple days ago. Sliding notes under the table at a meeting, or slipping into a closet to share a kiss before they meet up with the others. The kind of stuff Adora couldn’t forget if she tried—because now that she has happiness in her grasp, she’s not gonna let it go.

“Do you think I wouldn’t?” Adora says, and smiles, and leans forward to rest her chin on Catra’s shoulder. Catra grins, but it’s weak and a little watery, though Adora doesn’t really know why.

“Just testing your memory,” she says, and then she turns around and kisses Adora, and every kiss feels knock-the-air-out-of-your-lungs new, and it’s everything Adora ever wanted, even if she didn’t know it.

Sometimes, she wonders how it could have been if she’d just figured things out sooner.


End file.
